


The Calm In The Storm

by LostyK



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age II
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-30
Updated: 2015-06-30
Packaged: 2018-04-06 23:54:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 564
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4241478
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LostyK/pseuds/LostyK
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the explosion. There is a knife in her hand and a choice that was made long ago.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Calm In The Storm

There is a knife in her hand and she doesn't know what to do with it.

The knife is sharp, the metal shines as she rests it on her palm. Around them the world is filled with screams and silence, a battle being fought far away. She cannot move, can barely breathe, only looks at the knife, her mind starting and stopping and stuttering, she wonders if the fighting is real or just her imagination.

There is a knife in her hands and a choice balanced on its edge, except she stops thinking it part way through, cannot make it to the other option. She's already made the choice, she thinks, days ago when she couldn't sleep for the ominous feeling pressing down on her. When she decided it doesn't matter, that her love is unconditional.

At other times things were different, at times when she was victorious and drunk off the thoughts of revolution, but the sky is pink and purple like the colours of the bruises it once hid, and there is a scar in Kirkwall now that's always been here, and she didn't realise revolution would feel like this.

There is a knife in her hands, and his eyes flicker to it when she kneels in front of him, his face shifts to a look of resignation, courage in acceptance and it makes her want to throw it away but her hands don't work right, but it's the only thing that feels solid and she has to hold onto it so she won't disappear.

He looks tired the way she feels tired, and she wonders if Andraste ever felt like this, if her revolution was everything she ever dreamed of, if she ever grew tired of fighting her entire life in a war that will consume her. She doesn't know if he regrets it, but she knows he regrets the deaths, and did Andraste ever weep for the foot-soldiers her armies killed? Probably not, but then, Andraste was never a healer.

"Why didn't you tell me?" she asks, and his eyes meet hers. Blue and brown, except sometimes he was more and his eyes matched hers.

She knows the answer even before he says it. She might have helped him. All she can do is look into his eyes, struggle to tell him that she was involved in this since long before she met him, that he was never fighting alone, but there aren't enough words left in her and the words on the knife are all wrong.

There is a knife in her hands and she will not let him be consumed by war. She collapses into him and wraps her arms around him, her face buried in her chest and he is still. An image of supplication. She whispers _stay with me_ and _help me fight_ and it isn't a command, isn't a condition but a plea and she was always too proud to beg until today.

He hugs her back and whispers yes into her hair, two drowning people clinging on to each other so they aren't pulled apart by the currents that surround them. This is revolution and this is reparation and this is war. It is necessary and it burns her and she never lets go.

There if a knife in her hands but she cannot drop it, as they have more enemies now than before.


End file.
